Occasional reflections on Life, the World, and Mathematics

Archive for May, 2010

I find the difference in perspective on immigration between North America and Europe all the more striking, because on the standard left-right axis the European consensus — typically to the left of the U.S. on issues like healthcare, private enterprise, and invading other countries and torturing captives — is so far to the right on the U.S. and Canadian political spectra that it’s hardly to found at all. This was made clear in the recent controversy over the Arizona law that would have police checking papers when they have “reasonable suspicion” that someone is illegally in the country. This was treated as such an obvious affront to decency that even most of the right wing didn’t want anything to do with it. In most European countries, there would be nothing controversial about permitting police to stop anyone to ask for identification. (The U.K. is a slight exception here, as the irrational hatred of foreigners has to contend with an irrational hatred of identity cards. Utility bills are considered a superior form of identification.) In Germany (which, despite the popular association in the anglophone media with police-state tactics, is fairly casual about immigrants) I needed to show proof of immigration status in order to get a library card. And whereas even the farthest right in the U.S. distanced themselves from Republican representative Duncan Hunter’s proposal that the children of illegal immigrants be deported (presumably after having their citizenship revoked), I don’t know of any country other than the U.S. and Canada that automatically grants citizenship even to the children of legal immigrants. For instance, my daughter born here is not a U.K. citizen, even though her mother, as an E.U. citizen, has the right to live and work here. (The usually even-tempered journalist Joan Walsh has called Hunter’s proposal “crazy“, and says “I’m not sure Hunter has a soul.” I don’t think it’s a good idea, but it’s obviously not an absurdity, even if it does involve the procedural hurdle in the U.S. of requiring a constitutional amendment. There’s clearly a problem of having minor U.S. children whose parents can be (and are) deported.)

In the U.K. context, it’s barely controversial to bash legal immigrants, much less illegal immigrants. In the most recent prime ministerial debate, the one thing David Cameron and Gordon Brown agreed on was that the Liberal Democrats’ proposal of an amnesty for long-term illegal residents was simply insane and indefensible. They didn’t even have to respond to his counter-arguments, pretend that they had an alternative solution for the problem. It’s the putatively left-wing party in power for the past 13 years in the U.K. that can’t think of enough new ways to attack foreigners, that they have to invent bizarrely creative ways to attack foreigners, like the law banning foreigners from marrying without Home Office approval, or instituting new proposals that immigrants need to perform “volunteer” work to earn citizenship.

What I find amazing is how clear the consensus in the U. S. and Canada in favour of (legal) immigration is, and that the very idea of basing citizenship primarily on parentage rather than on birth in the country is treated as an absurdity by right-thinking people.